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2016 CSA Series- Week 4

Woah. Jokes over. Turn back the calendar. How it is August already?!?!

Life has been a little on the hectic side. We’ve been painting the new house in full force (since June really, but we’ve been going HAM lately). That leaves little time for blogging! 🙂 But I’m trying to snap lots of pics to share our mini reno were doing.

*side note* picking paint colors is a unique form of torture I was not aware of until now…..

Focus…. ok, since the last CSA(community supported agriculture) post I’ve also gone to my CSA farm to meet my farmers and have a tour around the farm. It was a beautiful day, it’s a beautiful farm, and I can’t wait to share more about that and pictures of it soon!

Now, this week is jam packed with goodies. ❤

Here’s what we got in box# 4:Some pretty standard items so not too hard to identify but because it’s fun:

Sometimes it takes a while for me to find something interesting and fun to do with the veggies but I’m pretty happy with what we did this time around.

Cabbage: I have the perfect thing I want to do with this but time got the best of me and then I got another one in my next box so I’m going to do a double batch and share it with you next time! Stay tuned 🙂

Broccoli: Honey Lemon Chicken Rice Bowls So albeit, while this might not be the most exciting thing to do with the broccoli itself this dish as a whole is fun. The broccoli was so fresh and delicious I’m sort of happy we just steamed it and go to enjoy the full blown flavor by itself. These Honey Lemon Chicken Rice Bowls are a breeze to whip up and also make great leftovers for work too!

You can reduce your sauce down as much as you ‘d like. The honey gets it very sticky and sugary so you can get a pretty thick sauce if you’d like. But it’s all up to you and what you like 🙂 The longer you simmer the thicker it will get (don’t forget it will thicken up even more when off the heat).

Pickling Cucumbers & Onion:Easy Refrigerator PicklesTHIS recipe is my favorite pickle recipe in the WORLD. It’s so easy and so delicious. A tab bit sweeter than the average recipe but I love it. I usually eat way more than my fair share of these in one sitting.

I adapted a recipe I found and added flax and chia seeds for added nutrition. There’s also a surprising amount of zucchini in here too! They’re cookies but they also pack a healthy punch! And important step in the instructions is to squeeze the zucchini dry (or as dry as you can) this will help keep your cookies from being a soggy mess. 🙂 I used both zucchini and summer squash in this recipe as you can see from all the beautiful green and yellow flecks below (Go Pack Go 🙂 ).

Cauliflower & Swiss Chard:Riced Cauliflower & Swiss Chard Spaghetti These pictures didn’t turn out that great. Apparently I was shaky mc shakes this day and all of them have a little blur, sorry about that! This was a off the whim creation and has a great summery lemon taste along with being packed with TONS of veggies; the swiss chard reduces in size greatly and the cauliflower rice is so fine you wouldn’t know you’re eating a plate of veggies too 🙂 My hubs thought all the little riced cauliflower peices were garlic. ha! I DO love garlic but that would be extreme even for me. But as you can see from this close up, this recipe is a terrific way to get an extra serving of vegetables into a pasta dish. It’s virtually undetectable.

Lettuce, Onions, & Cucumbers:Cucumber & Blueberry Summer Salad What would a week in summer be without a salad?! Very similar to our berry salad from last week, but still different enough and delicious!

More Cucumbers: I had quite the supply of cukes laying around. I got a ton in the box and my in-laws gave some to me too. I made my go to bbq dish for a group of people we had over at the house and it was a big hit, not to mention a great way to use up a seemingly never ending supply of cucumbers. Oh and the best part? It take like 5 minutes to make. win.win.win.

Eggplant:Brushcetta I posted about this in the last box post as well but didn’t have any pictures. So because it’s so freaking delicious, I decided to make it again and share pictures this time! This one was one of the first recipes I put up on the blog back when I first started it. And oh woooowww, looking back how my formatting and photography have changed since then. Needless to say, an updated share was necessary although it’s still as delicious as the first time I made it; it just looks much more presentable now 🙂

Carrots & Hot Peppers:Roasted Veggie Tacos This was the recipe I was most excited to make. Sort of inspired by my roasted veggie stacked enchiladas , these roasted carrot tacos are a delicious meat free meal for mid week (or any time of week!) If you wanted you could sub sweet potato for the carrots or do a mix, but I wanted the delicious carrots to be the highlight!!

Whew another week in the books! 🙂 Hope you enjoyed. Get out there and make the most of the rest of the summer!

2016 CSA Series – Week 3

Happy Wednesday! I’m happy mostly because I just picked up another box of delicious CSA veggies from Small Family Farm CSA … oh and the fact it was my last full day of work for the week (#score).

It’s a little hard to handle that it’s close to the end of July already! Though I’m going to keep calling it the middle of July until about July 27th or so… 😉

One thing that I’ve been loving this summer is the delicious CSA veggies and all the awesome new recipes we’ve been creating; and we’re not even half way through the season!

If you don’t follow us on Instagram, make sure to head over and check us out! You’ll get to see what we’re doing with the delicious veggies quicker than waiting around here for a comprehensive post. Plus you’ll see more day to day life stuff too.

Instagram is my favorite social media platform; followed by Snapchat. I don’t even have Facebook on my phone anymore and Twitter…oh Twitter, while I “get it”…I don’t get it. So hard to really follow people and see what their up to and honestly I can never say what I want to in 140 characters 🙂 What’s YOUR favorite? Whatever it is, if you have Instagram, we’d love a little extra love over there. ❤

Without boring you to death and without further adieu…. our recipes from our CSA box #3!!! (Check out Week 1 and Week 2 if you missed them).

Used the Green Cabbage, Kohlrabi & Green Onions:Before the past couple days, We’d been having some absolutely gorgeous summer weather (not too hot or humid) and we took advantage and made some delicious burgers on the grill. There might honestly be nothing better than a grassfed beef burger cooked on a natural charcoal grill enjoyed while sitting outside. ❤ This coleslaw was the perfect fresh veggie side. I didn’t make and use that much “sauce” because I hate goopy and soggy coleslaw but if you find you want more, feel free to do so!

Used the Lettuce & Strawberries:These strawberries! You guysssss, just as good as the last box and so much better than store bought. They were so good. We used them in both the salad it’self and in the dressing! I had a friend over and this salad was a big hit, she even made it for her family the next night she liked it so much! 🙂 Used the Fennel:So don’t judge me but I’m not the biggest fan of fennel, not that I don’t like it per say but it’s just not something that I crave or really enjoy it’s sort of a “just there” vegetable for me. HOWEVER this roasted vegetable recipe (which was adapted from Bon Appétit, mainly because I’m lazy and din’t have some ingredients) is really realllyy good. I’m a sucker for any and all roasted veggies and the olive oil vinegarette and mint leaves pack a flavorful punch for this recipe. Even if you happen to be in the same boat as me and feel a little MEH about fennel, give this one a try! (Side note, it’s good cold the next day too for lunch!) Used the Peas, Summer Squash, Zucchini, Basil & Eggs:I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem. I LOVE zucchini noodles but my husband? Not so much. Every time he asked what’s for dinner and I say *blank blank* pasta or pasta with *blank* I get “real pasta or the zucchini stuff?” it’s hard to reflect tone in writing but if you could hear it, you’d know he’s not a fan. This is the perfect solution for us! It mixes in spiralized veggie pasta with regular pasta and I’m not even sure he noticed! It helps it stay a little sturdier and not a soggy mess and keeps all members of our household happy.

This recipe in particular is a breeze to whip up and will be a fave. I LOVE LOVE LOVE eggs and loveeee runny eggs, but again my hubby isn’t a huge fan. After eating this even he said that it really adds a special something and makes the dish better! You can cook the eggs to whatever “doneness” you want. I poached mine for just under 4 minutes and his, almost 6. I get a dozen eggs every other week with my CSA box too so this was a delicious way to use some up!Not a great picture, but couldn’t resist a little gooey egg action 🙂 🙂 Used the Garlic Scapes & Cucumbers:Garlic scapes, those crazy weird delicious veggie. For those that may not know, a garlic scape is the stalk that grows from the bulbs of some varieties of garlic plants. If you were to let them grow, the scapes eventually bloom flowers when the garlic plant fully matures. However, they’re usually harvested before they flower so the garlic plant can channel all its energy into producing the actual garlic bulbs. Garlic scapes taste mild like chives or scallions, but with a distinct garlicky flavor. They’re typically available in late spring and early summer. There are so many things you can do with them but to preserve their unique shape and look I just sauteed them whole and topped these delicious bowls with them.

These bowls. ohhhh these bowls. The recipe makes enough to feed 4+ (depending on how much you serve) and since there’s only two of us, I enjoyed two delicious bowl lunches out of this too. I think it got progressively more delicious with each day.

Used the Collards:This was the first meal I made with the CSA veggies from this box. Holy Moly we started out strong. I can’t even pick a favorite part of this meal. The polenta (grits), the chicken, the collards, the toasted coconut…it was all so damn good.

Used the Eggplant:
Didn’t take a picture but we made this bruschetta and it was as good as I remembered the first time I made it.

2016 CSA Series- Week 2

Soooo I’m a day late this week. That’s allowed right? I just got back from vacation on Beaver Island and this week is all messed up anyway (tell me you guys can’t seem to remember what day it is either).

Last night I picked up our CSA box #3 from Small Family CSA Farm! So it’s time to review what we got in the last box, week #2, and what we did with it all!

If you missed the goodies from week #1, check that out here. And here is the delicious spread of what we got in box 2:Do you know what each item is? See below if you’re not sure. 🙂

Since I was on vacation I didn’t spend as much time (OK straight up zero time) photographing what we did with each item. I wanted to relax and unwind and while I love blogging, vacation meant a break from that and thinking about it too! So needless to say, this post will be much less extensive and have much less pictures than box 1 (which maybe you like….? Let me know in the comments below.)

Let’s dig right in.

Romaine and Buttercup:Primarily used the romaine as sandwich lettuce and as a bread alternative for lunch sandwiches and then one night we also made a big salad with dinner. I love romaine for it’s sturdy and crunchy bottom and yet it still has a soft and smooth top but man that butter lettuce is so delicious and such a nice change up. It’s so buttery and smooth and delicious.

Didn’t do anything earth shattering-ly genius with this. We had a homemade pizza and salad night. It was delicious. We filled the salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, salad turnips, and some green onions.

While some might not think lettuce is the most “exciting” thing in a box, it certainly might be the most delicious. ❤

Salad Turnips:Again, nothing too crazy, these little guys have a really smooth texture and are super delicious raw. We popped a few, sliced, into our salad and I ate a some as a snack too 🙂

Celeriac Root:I loveeeeee celeriac. And for all of those thinking “hey isn’t it a little early for this in the season?”…yes, it is. This is actually left over from winter. I was so excited that I was a little overwhelmed on what to pick to do with it. Soooo as usual when faced with a multitude of options, I freeze up. And actually that’s what I did with the celeriac too. Blanched it and froze it.

What I did was peel it, and cut it up into reasonable sized chunks (like 2-3 inch cubes) then blanched it. Put your chunks in boiling water for about 3 minutes, then place directly into an ice bath. Then place on a baking sheet and freeze for about 30-60 minutes and then pop in a bag or container (the freezing individually on a sheet first, makes sure that the cubes don’t become just one big frozen chunk). That’s it! Now I can just thaw out when I finally decide what delicious thing I want to make!

This is what I want to try, but just maybe when it’s not 90º + outside.

Green Garlic:One night we made a chicken veggie curry over rice and used a lot of the the box veggies in that. Curry dishes and stir fry’s are some of my favorite ways to use up a lot of veggies and they’re so easy too! The box veggies we used were the green garlic, zucchini, and green onions. We also threw in some broccoli, peppers, and chicken. Perfect quick and healthy dinner!

Kale:I was that weird kid who loved Kale. I would beg for it for dinner and my favorite way to eat it was steamed/sauted with some balsamic vinegar. One day I learned we had some growing on our farm, I marched right out there and ate it until I had a belly ache. I still love Kale, cooked or raw and everything in between.

A few years ago when Kale chips became a “thing” I thought, omg I have to try those, I will love them!! Then much to my chagrin, I hated them. Seriously couldn’t even eat more than one. They didn’t taste like Kale and there were a weird texture. I was so sad. But everyone seemed to love them and still rave about them. How could this even be possible? I was a real Kale lover.

Then a friend of mine made some while I was at her house and I tasted it and it was really good. I had to give it another try. I researched and researched and came up with a fool proof way to make delicious and extra crispy chips. The main trick I think is to not have the oven too hot and also to make sure you message each leaf with oil, not just drizzle and toss it. Literally you need to make sure that each piece has oil on the whole thing; every nook and cranny. You don’t need a lot of oil to do this, but it just takes time to make sure you touch and coat each piece.

When I saw Kale in our box I knew I had to make Kale chips as the perfect healthy road trip snack for our vacation! My mom, my sister, and I loved them!Zucchini:We had one little baby zuch and used it cut in in our curry/stir fry dish.

Peas:These were so gorgeous and sooooo fresh tasting I honestly ate them as a road trip snack on our way to the island! They would have been good in our curry too, but I hate them all plain 🙂

Strawberries:There is positively nothing better than fresh strawberries. The flavor and even smell they have is so amazing and power packed that I makes you wonder what the hell those “strawberries” at the store are. Compared to these fresh ones they only have a slight strawberry taste.

I wish I had something awesome to share but we really just ate these like candy. I topped a piece of bread with almond butter and a few of these sliced up one day but other than that, just ate straight out of the pack.

Green Onions:My sister and I used to eat these bad boys plain. Good ole fashioned Wisconsin supper clubs and salad bars know what I’m talking about! These bad boys with a little cheese spread…mmmmm so good. But we controlled ourselves and put then in our salad and also in our stir fry dish.

Kohlrabi:I loveeeee Kohlrabi. We had two from our box and I still had one a friend had given me that she had gotten in her CSA but she doesn’t like them. They are so good just to munch on or in a salad. I’ve been seeing a look of cooked Kohlrabi recipes lately and that definitely is on my list of things to try but this time we just cut them up and used them as chips for guacamole. Seriously they maaaybbee better than regular corn tortilla chips.

Dill:Dill would be great in our delicious fermented asparagus spears from week one or as we were in the middle of Lake Michigan, it would be delicious with some lemon over some fresh whitefish. That whitefish was our intention but in the spirit of honestly, we tried two days in a row to get some whitefish but they didn’t have any! I would have been fine with the Lake Trout but not everyone in the house was up for that. Sadly this dill went mostly unused except for a little in our tuna salad for lunch one day (that was delicious though!).

So there you have it, another week down. I picked up our week 3 box last night and it was seriously PACKED with great stuff. I have so many fun ideas and recipes planned for it. Make sure to subscribe and check back so you don’t miss it! 🙂

2016 CSA Series- Week 1

Can’t believe it’s almost time to pick up our next CSA box! If you missed our latest post about how we are participating in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share this year, check it out here.

So since we are about to pick up our next box, it’s about time we share with you what got in our first box and what recipes and fun things we did with each of the items!

So here is the haul we received in week 1:Think you know what each item is? Let’s take a look:

Asparagus

Fresh breakfast radishes

Buttercup Lettuce

Bok Choy or Pac Choi

Green Garlic

Shallots

Rhubarb

Herb Pack (Thyme, Basil, Oregano, Sage)

Pea Shoots

Large bag of Spinach in the middle!

I love that we get such a wide variety of stuff in our boxes! It’s fun to experiment with different ingredients and never feel like you’re “drowning” in something and not sure what to do with it all.

Ok so lets get started! I’ll just list out each ingredient and post what we did

AsparagusI honestly love raw asparagus as a snack and the stuff I got was so skinny and beautiful and tender that I was half tempted just to snack on it. But that’s not very fun to share with all of you so I decided to try fermented “pickled” asparagus spears. If you want to learn more about the benefits of fermented foods and the amazing impact they can have on your health, check out our past post, here.

These asparagus spears are fermented and not pickled. What’s the difference? Pickled foods are preserved in an acidic medium, where fermented foods are preserved in salt water with a starter culture. These are sort of quasi pickled because as you’ll see below I used about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (make sure it says “with the mother” & here’s my favorite brand) to act as my starter.

If you’ve been wanting to dip your toes into fermenting your own foods but are a little hesitant, this the perfect recipe because it’s so simple, you don’t need any special equipment (just make sure to burp your jar occasionally).These bad boys are good on their own but probably even better as a garnish in a bloody mary! 🙂Radishes & SpinachConfession- I’ve never had cooked radishes before. I have always eaten them cold, preferably with a hefty sprinkle of sea salt too. But when I was researching something out of the norm to do with radishes, I came across this Radish & Spinach Pasta dish that looked too good not to give it a try.

If you think cooking radishes is weird, STOP IT! It’s delicious and you won’t be sorry. They turn a soft pink color and it sort of enhances their peppery flavor. Plus I mean the recipe also has bacon in it sooooo how can it be bad?We used the breakfast radishes (ok we ate a few cold too) and the beautiful spinach as well as a few of the shallots from our box. It turned out delicious. Not heavy at all and surprisingly light for it being pasta and all oh, and containing bacon but it really made for a delicious light summer dinner!**Don’t get rid of your radish greens! They are very nutritious and can be used for any number of things. In salads, in smoothies, in stir frys…I happened to be making some homemade chicken bone broth and threw them in there with it. I’m all for being resourceful and reducing waste!

Butter Lettuce Recently I posted about how much I love salads and how they’re the best super fast and healthy dinner for busy weeknights…aaaaand I still think that 🙂 Butter lettuce is so soft and yet crisp and delicious. I think that these would also be PERFECT for a lettuce cup but this time we opted for the traditional salad route. However the salad we made was anything but traditional.Topped with quinoa, loaded with veggies and dressed in THE most delicious “creamy” avocado dressing ….. you’ll find it hard to believe it’s “just” a salad!The dressing isn’t pictured above but it truly is amazing.

Bok Choy/Pac Choi & Green Garlic So another confession (you guys are really making me wear my heart on my sleeve today!) when I saw my farm list Pac Choi on the list for the box, I had no idea what it was. And then when I saw the picture I said to myself, wait…that’s BOK CHOY! Well it turns out, from what I was able to conclude, that Bok Choy and Pac Choi are one in the same. Now you know 🙂

I was very tempted to try to grill the pac choi but it was pretty large and I think that might work better with smaller more compact heads. So I settled on a Ginger Stir Fried Bok Choy & Green Garlic over Turmeric Rice. I had been wanting to try a rendition of some turmeric rice I had come across lately but didn’t know what to pair it with. These stir fried greens were perfect with it.My husband doesn’t really do well with meals that don’t have a lot of protein so I threw some nuts, and seeds on top and we were both happy! I used sliced almonds, pistachios, and some hemp seeds. and of course if you’re like me you are addicted to spicy and you top it with chili sauce (& some nutritional yeast 🙂 )Rhubarb I am obsessed with rhubarb. My mom and I have a matching cookbook that is dedicated solely to rhubarb. There’s so much you can do with it! I actually already had some more rhubarb just chilling in my fridge waiting to get used up so when I got some more in by box, it was the motivation to finally make something with it.

A coworker of mine had recently gifted me a hunk of her mint plant and seriously it’s growing like crazy in my pot. So I needed to use some of that bad boy and what better way to do that than with mojitos! And what’s better that regular old mojitos? Rhubarb Mint Mojitos ❤We made a rhubarb simple syrup and then put that in some mojitos. But good news is that if mojitos aren’t your thing or drinking alcohol isn’t your thing, the syrup makes a delicious spritzer with just sparkling water as well! These will have their own special post coming soon, but you get sneak peek 🙂Use the syrup as you would in a “normal” mojito. Make sure to check back for the recipe post coming soon!

Pea ShootsIf you’ve never tried pea shoots, you need to. They are such a fun ingredient. They taste exactly like freshly shelled peas and yet are a leafy green! I love the way they taste so I didn’t really want to cook them or drown out their taste with other ingredients.

I tried to make cauliflower steaks (big fail people, big fail) and needed a simple salad to go with. I used these to make a Pea Shoot & Arugula salad with lemon vinaigrette and needless to say, it was the highlight of the dinner and we wished there was more of it to drown out our sorrows of the less than delicious cauliflower 😉

Shallots These were so adorable, if you are one who agrees food can be adorable. I mean look at them, they’re so little and cute! We used some in our radish pasta listed above, some in our stir fried bok choy also listed above, and still have some saved to use in the future.

Herb PackThis might have been my favorite thing in the box! I was so excited to get these goodies. We planted them to let them grow and hopefully (I say hopefully because if you saw my thumbs, they’re black as night) we can use to make various things, maybe they’ll even grow big enough so we can make our favorite chumichurri sauce!

Whew! That’s it! That’s what a week (plus a few days) of food looks like in our house. What do you guys think? What are some of your favorite things to do with the ingredients we got?

Thanks for hanging in there and reading along. Tune in again in two weeks to catch what was in our 2nd box and what we did with it all!

Creamy Lentil Stew

You might be thinking, it’s April, it’s not “stew season” it’s starting to get warm! I want to see fun fresh veggies and salads and grilled foods.

And to that I would say hold your horses. I hear ya, I reeealllly do but the fact of the matter is that I woke up to snow this morning.

SNOWWWWWWWW. Onemoretimefordramaticeffect. S.N.O.W.

So yes, while I have me eyes on some delicious spring and summer inspired dishes like this and this; please excuse me while I curl up into a ball, shed a tear, and eat this comforting and oh so delicious stew

I’m ready for spring. I really actually appreciate each season and love what each one offers but I start to get antsy in April when it’s 70° one day and snowy the next. In the words of the Backstreet Boys, quit playing games with my heart. 💔

But on the bright side, because there’s ALWAYS a bright side, the colder & cozier temps allow me to share this seriously good stew with you.

It’s a breeze to whip up, makes a LOT (who doesn’t love leftovers?), it’s great for you, and most importantly tastes GREAT too!So there you have it- easy and delicious soup!

If you are lucky enough to live somewhere warm and sunny and you just can’t possibly think of soup……please get off my site! Kidding. I’m jealous. It’s a hard emotion to control.

Send some of that sunshine and warm temps over here! If you are still subject to the winter blues like me, I promise this stew will make you feel better. 🙂 Enjoy!!